Everything that's gold does not glitter

Month: December 2017

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I am not a pet person. (I’ve mentioned this fact on a number of previous occasions in this space — here and here, for example). Today, however, I almost wish I were. You see, our county animal shelter is full.

I’m not exaggerating here. The Bradshaw Road facility out near Highway 50 is usually pretty close to capacity (they chalk it up to a combination of overpopulation due to a failure to spay/neuter and the general public attitude that cats and dogs are disposable). But this is different. They are full. No vacancy. No room at the inn. Can’t take any more no matter how desperate the situation. Nowhere to put any kitty or puppy that shows up at the door.

How can I adequately explain how desperate the situation is? At the beginning of December, the shelter’s occupancy level was labeled “extremely full.” This week, however, the Sacramento Bee reported that a local animal advocacy group posted the following on Facebook: “The shelter is beyond capacity. There is NO MORE ROOM!”

Because I am a hopelessly sappy sucker, I’d actually consider adopting one of these critters if I didn’t live in a place where no pets are allowed (except for the landlord’s pets — more about that later this weekend). I’m lucky to have something to save me (and the poor dog or cat who got stuck with me) from my own folly.

Arthur and Ophia, two of the pit bulls currently available for adoption at the Sacramento County animal shelter.

I suspect that one of the reasons for the shelter being overflowing is that most of the dogs currently up for adoption are pit bulls. Like German shepherds and labs, these dogs are big guys. This means that they demand a lot of the shelter’s resources. Also, they’re harder than a lot of breeds to adopt. They eat a lot, they poop a lot, and they need a lot of space to run around in. You probably shouldn’t have a pit bull if you live in a one-bedroom apartment. Also, well, pits have a bad rep. Some people are afraid to have them around babies and little kids. And every so often, you read a story in the news about some unfortunate who was mauled to death by his or her own pit bull. There are plenty of people out there who love this breed, but pits are clearly not for everyone.

Then there are the cats. This evening, I’m seeing 62 of them on the shelter’s website. Six of those were recently adopted. This is as opposed to 17 of the shelter’s 74 dogs having been recently adopted. More than a few of the available felines are labeled as “barn cats,” which I suppose is an appeal to those who have mice to get rid of. Then again, I suppose “barn cat” is a not-so-subtle hint that this is not a cute, cuddly kitty who is going to curl up in your lap and purr while you’re watching Netflix.

Oh, I should mention that there are also three rabbits and four chickens up for adoption at the shelter. No goldfish, turtles, hamsters or snakes, apparently.

It’s no surprise that the adoptable chickens are not the egg-laying hens that everyone wants. No siree, they’re loud, obnoxious, pugilistic roosters. We’ve got plenty in our neighborhood, some of which have a predilection for crowing in the middle of the night. My guess is that if these guys ever get adopted, they’ll go straight in the pot with a bunch of carrots and onions. I see them for sale all the time in cages by the Mexican butcher shop at the corner of Main and Rio Linda Boulevard. I can only hope that they don’t end up forced into illegal cockfighting, a fate arguably worse than being served up next to the mashed potatoes. As for the rabbits, they need to hold on for another three months or so until they’re in demand as Easter gifts. Otherwise, they may well meet the same fate as the roosters.

I have to wonder how many of the shelter dogs and cats will end up murdered — I mean “euthanized.” As if I had to mention it. You know what euthanized is a euphemism for. Back in school, I learned that “euthanize” is from the Greek for “good death.” But you know that half of what you learn in school is propaganda and lies. I was well into adulthood before I learned that the correct translation of the Greek is “couldn’t get adopted.”

Some have registered surprise that an animal lover such as myself doesn’t have pets. I mean, since I’m vegan and all. And especially since I don’t have kids. (As if pets can substitute for children. People are so dumb.)

Honestly, I can understand why more people don’t adopt dogs and cats. They’re a lot of work, they cost a lot of money, and then they die on you. I had to laugh this week when I read an article about a dog that helped save a fat man’s life. This guy weighed 340 pounds, was taking 15 different medications, and all efforts at weight loss had failed him. He hurt all over and tried not to move any more than he had to. (I weigh more than that. You’re not telling me anything I don’t know.) Apparently, he was spurred into action by an embarrassing moment when a plane he was on had to be delayed while they found a seatbelt extender large enough to fit him. Haha! I’ve got that one all figured out. I don’t fly. Oh, this guy had to travel for his job. So do I. Luckily for me, my employer insists on using the discount carrier Southwest, which has a rule that fat people have to buy two seats. Score! Now it’s cheaper for me to drive than to fly. I’ll be laughing at my destination while the others are waiting hours to get through the TSA line.

So then this guy makes an appointment with a naturopathic doctor, who tells him to switch to a plant-based diet. Again, haha! Plant-based diets are certainly gaining popularity; even Kaiser encourages this now and has messages about it on their interminable “hold” recordings. But after three years of being vegan, I can tell you firsthand that eating plants won’t by itself make you thin. The article cited Bill Clinton’s diet, which I’ve read is not totally vegan despite his representations to the contrary.

Then the naturopathic doctor ordered this guy to go to the animal shelter and get a dog. “Why a dog?” he said. “Can I adopt a cat instead?” The doctor responded: “Have you ever walked a cat?” Again, haha! No, I have never walked a cat, nor a dog either. As I see it, you have a nice fenced yard, you let the dog out, it does its business, it comes back in. Or, like our landlord, you leave the dog in a large pen outside the house all day. But going out in the dark of night (this time of year, I go to work and come home in the pitch blackness), freezing cold, wind and snow with a plastic bag and pooper scooper? No how, no way. Oh, and by the way, if I want to go walking for exercise, I don’t need a dog (or cat) to do that.

All of which brings me to my mother. Her beloved Siamese cat, Taffy, left for kitty heaven a little over a year ago at the age of 18. Taffy was originally my sister’s, but wasn’t doing well cooped up in Sis’s condo. She drove Taffy and her meds down from the Bay Area to my parents’ house, in hope that the country air and space to roam about might improve her health. It did. Taffy took to her new life as an outdoor/indoor cat and throve with my parents for more than a decade and a half. Now she’s buried out at the back edge of their property.

Mom’s Siamese, Taffy, back in 2015.

My sister from Boston, who came out to visit this past week on the occasion of my parents’ 65th wedding anniversary, decided that the time has come for Mom to get another cat. I suppose I can understand this, as she’s nearly always had a cat (or two). There were entirely too many for me to remember, but I do recall a gray one named Pussy Willow, an all-white one named Snowflake, an orange hellion named Mewcus (eww), another gray one named Schwantzy and a huge white one with black ears and paws with the unlikely name of Baby Baldrick (who ran away to become a Canadian chat when we attempted to retrieve him from a kennel at a campground in Québec). Mom doesn’t believe in spay and neuter, so we had cats that would have as many as three litters per year. I remember my sisters and I standing with a boxful of kittens on Saturdays, yelling “Free Kitten!” until we were hoarse in front of Pathmark on Route 59.

Nevertheless, I think Mom, who is well into her 80s, should decide when she’s ready for another cat, not my sister. But Sis pushed the issue, taking Mom to Petco to look at the adoptable cats, then to the local animal shelter, where over 200 felines were available for adoption. Mom was impressed by the way that the cats had free reign over the place, prowling in and out of cat doors to visit each other in various rooms and out of doors, as well. But she couldn’t seem to find exactly the one she wanted. She said she doesn’t wanted a little kitten, nor does she want an older, lazy fat cat. So what exactly did Mom want?

A Siamese. Mom’s favorite cat was a Siamese named Pouncy who was run over crossing the road in front of our house when I was two years old. She lives on in my father’s reels of Super 8 home movies. After my parents retired and moved to California, Mom’s first cat was a dusky blue-eyed Siamese beauty named Bonnebeau (supposedly because she was beautiful and good). Of course she wasn’t spayed, so Bonnie, an indoor cat, went into heat and meowed piteously to be let out to have at it with the neighborhood toms. Eventually, she did manage to get out and celebrated her newfound freedom by taking off for parts unknown.

Unfortunately, Mom and Sis did not see any Siamese at either Petco or the animal shelter. So my sister got online and showed my Mom pictures of cats, including Siamese, available for adoption from the Cat House on the Kings, over in Fresno County.

Then my sister got on a plane and headed home, after which Mom admitted that she doesn’t really want to deal with another cat.

We just spent the last two days with family and we will again on Christmas Day. We have a break in the middle for the purpose of driving up California’s Central Valley to maybe throw a load of laundry in and spend a night sleeping in our own bed before heading north to do it again with another part of the family.

Today is my parents’ 65th wedding anniversary. We had Shabbat dinner at their house on Friday evening, followed by an informal party on Saturday. In between, we drove down to the rural area of southern Fresno County to watch my wife’s three year old grandniece open gifts.

Both my sisters, along with two of my nephews, were present for my parents’ big day. Mom made up the hors d’oeuvres platter, my parents bought the cake at a local supermarket, and one of my sisters did most of the cooking. She and her husband are pesco-vegetarians, but they accommodated my vegan ways by preparing tofu ratatouille, broccoli, rice and potatoes along with their salmon. The carnivores in the crowd had meatballs and franks.

One of my sisters lives over in the Bay Area and commutes to her job in the Central Valley. Working 12-hour shifts in a hospital, she has a crazy schedule and was lucky to get a day off to attend our festivities. My other sister is a teacher in the suburbs of Boston, while her husband is a tech industry exec in Dallas. All three of their kids are in Boston; two work in tech, while one is still in college. After years in Dallas, Sis left her husband behind and decamped for Boston in June, mostly because their anorexic daughter was in and out of the hospital and Sis was worried sick. Before long, my niece told Sis to buzz off, which, understandably, my sister took hard. Still, she enjoys the Jewish community and liberal academic environment that Boston has to offer, a far cry from her red-state experiences in Texas. Back in Dallas, hubby takes care of the house and the cats and is overseas for his job one week each month. He visits Sis in Boston frequently. The thought is that, eventually, they’ll buy a house in Boston. None of us is getting any younger, and hubby is bound to retire sooner or later. Meanwhile, Sis rents a room in a house owned by a couple she knows. She complains that the room is drafty and is usually too cold in the New England winter. But she loves her job and being near friends and her kids.

I am reminded of my parents, who were also separated for a number of years due to their careers. My mother worked in places like Rhode Island and Utica NY while Dad stayed in the house in the suburbs of New York City, making a long drive to visit Mom once or twice each week.

What a way to live, huh? I know that, these days, you have to go wherever the job is, but I always think in terms of wife and husband moving together. Then again, I think of marriage as involving shared finances as well as a shared residence. Yet my parents have kept their finances separate for decades. I used to think this was unusual, but now I’m starting to hear that it’s not so uncommon. Blech!

The funny thing about my family, that was really brought home to me during our visit this week, is that we have next no nothing in common. From a common origin, my sisters and I have shot off in totally different directions in terms of geography, family and career. I’m glad that I don’t see my sisters very often, as I can’t imagine us getting along for more than a few hours every year or so. We simply have different worldviews, and I sometimes wonder whether we’re really from different planets. Certainly I couldn’t ever see calling one of them to ask for advice on a problem. For the most part, I prefer to have as little to do with them as possible.

The disjointedness of our lives became embarrassingly apparent as my sister from Boston attempted to encourage conversation as we all sat together in my parents’ family room on Saturday. There were long pregnant pauses, during which three or four of us would be occupied by apparently fascinating things on our phones, the rest of us absorbed in our own thoughts or staring off into space. Hospital Sis was sprawled out on the couch, nearly asleep. Boston Sis would offer conversation starters such as “Who has an interesting story about their job?” or “Who has done something interesting lately?” or “Has anyone seen any good movies or TV shows recently?” Most of these overtures fell flat after a minute or two, leaving us in physical proximity, but as emotionally distant from one another as we usually are geographically.

When it was time for dinner, we had to rustle up my wife and Hospital Sis, both of whom were fast asleep. Mom decided to wake up Sis by tickling her, which devolved into loud accusations of rudeness from both sides, along with threats never to visit again. Typical for us, I’m afraid. As Trump is so fond of saying, “Sad!” I don’t know why we bother to put on this dog and pony show, regardless of the occasion. Mom is a firm believer that “blood is thicker than water,” that families must stick together regardless of the profound differences between their members. Uh, enjoy?

Finally, when the cake and ice cream was served after dinner (no vegan desserts available, although I declined the offer of an orange), Hospital Sis resorted to web searching on her phone for a site full of courtroom jokes. Some of them were quite funny, primarily at the expense of inept attorneys, and we all laughed at them. Then Dad began to tell the same racist and dirty jokes that he’s told since I was a kid.

Soon, my wife and I drifted off to the family room to visit with my nephew, who told us stories about his life in the Bay Area. Everyone else remained in the living room, from whence I could hear my mother telling family stories about her parents’ emigration from Europe to America, the same stories she’s told dozens of times, year after year.

I’m not coldhearted enough to say no to my parents when they want all of their children present on the occasion of their 65th anniversary. Sixty-five years of fussing and fighting, yelling and cursing at each other. I know I’m not unique in this respect. As Tolstoy famously wrote, “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

As if to prove the truth of Tolstoy’s observation, my wife’s niece called us on FaceTime while we were at my parents’ house. She is 20 years old, has a 5 year old daughter, and can’t figure out what she wants in life. I attempted to give her advice along the lines of being true to herself, as she thinks she led a guy on, who she now wants to let down easy, or maybe not. Respect yourself and insist that he respect you was my recommendation. We had the call on speaker, and I think we put on quite a show for my own family.

As if to add a punch line to a decidedly unfunny joke, we stopped for coffee on the way home today and proceeded to drive over a nearly invisible concrete divider at the entrance to a parking lot, blowing out one of our tires. Right in front of a tire shop, I might add — a tire shop that was closed for Christmas Eve.

This makes two months in a row. Last time, it was on a desolate stretch of interstate in the middle of the Arizona desert on the way to the Grand Canyon. At least this time we had friends nearby who came to our rescue while the Triple A tow truck hauled off our vehicle to the only open tire shop in the area, about 15 minutes down the road. We had one hour until the shop closed, just enough time for them to take off the flat and install a new tire, to the tune of $165.

I remember being four and five years old, walking down the hill with my grandfather on a Saturday morning from our Bronx apartment building to the little shtibl (one-room storefront synagogue) where he prayed regularly with a group of retired men. Many of them would fuss over me, and I knew there’d be sweet treats (honey cake and grape juice) waiting for me if I could only hold out and not fidget too much until the end of the seemingly interminable service. It was such a relief when I would hear the sweet strains of Adon Olam and Ein Keloheinu that meant that we were nearly done.

Around the middle of the service, one of the men would solemnly take the Torah out of its ark, raise it up while everyone sang, and then set it down on the podium. The cloth covering would be removed, the string would be untied, and the Torah would be unrolled to the proper place for reading that week’s portion of the Pentateuch.

What everyone knew is that there’d be no Torah reading unless a minyan, a quorum of ten men, was present. Being under bar mitzvah age, I didn’t count. Neither did the few old ladies who would show up and sit behind the mekhitzah (curtain) in the back. It seemed we always had enough in attendance to do a proper Torah reading.

But that was in New York City, half a century ago. Today, in northern California, there is no guarantee of a minyan. In the synagogue that my elderly parents attended for about 20 years (they stopped going about a year ago), whether there would be a minyan or not on Shabbat (or, sad to say, even on a holiday) was a decidedly hit-or-miss affair. My father, who has a marked antipathy to religion of any type, would chauffeur my mother to synagogue with the intent of heading to the public library for a few hours. Inevitably, the rabbi’s son would come running out of the sanctuary, tzitzit (prayer fringes) flying, to implore my father to stay and make the tenth man needed for the minyan.

Orthodox Jews tend to take the rule of ten very seriously. I believe the origin of the tradition is that ten men are considered representative of the community as a whole. The Jewish jokes about this are legendary.

Of course, it’s not just any ten men who must be present to read from the Torah. They must be ten Jewish men. (My personal preference tends toward the modern egalitarian practices of many Conservative congregations, where both women and men count toward the minyan.) And just what constitutes a Jewish man? Well, traditionally the answer to this question involves far more than faith and practice. A man is considered Jewish if his mother was Jewish. I suppose fathers don’t count because the child develops and comes forth from the womb of the mother. But what if your mother had a Jewish dad and a non-Jewish mom? Then you’re not Jewish, at least according to Orthodox tradition. So determining whether a minyan is or is not present may involve inquiries into the provenance of the tenth man’s grandparents.

I suppose the emphasis on pedigree arises from our heritage as the “children of Israel.” Either you’re descended from the tribe or you’re not. This has caused a lot of trouble for those of us who were born into other faiths, or into no faith, and later convert to Judaism. It seems to me that those who wholeheartedly embrace our traditions should be counted as full members of our religious community. In some places they do (many Reformed congregations, for instance), while in others, they don’t. The disputes about converts that go on in some of the Conservative movement synagogues that I’ve attended remind me of the way many Christian churches tear themselves apart over whether to accept gays as full members of the congregation.

I started thinking about this topic earlier in the week when President Trump announced that the United States would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and would (eventually) move our embassy there. My first reaction was “it’s about time.” But I had to laugh, as Jerusalem has been the capital off Israel for millennia. Trump deciding that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel is a bit like me declaring that Cheerios is a cereal. It really doesn’t matter what we think. Some things are just facts.

I’m sorry to see on the news that violence has broken out in Israel over the United States’ recognition of what has always been true. Perhaps it is just another excuse to demonstrate ancient animosities among religious groups that are neighbors in the Middle East. Yet I don’t see such garrulousness as an excuse to perpetuate a lie. Tel-Aviv has never been the capital of Israel. I heard a comment on TV that Tel-Aviv is “a lot more fun” than Jerusalem. Perhaps Tel-Aviv is the industrial and technological hub of Israel, and perhaps its nightlife is better than Jerusalem’s. But that doesn’t make Tel-Aviv any more the capital of Israel than it makes Portland the capital of Oregon or of Maine.

Hanukkah, the Jewish eight-day festival of lights, begins this week. Just as recognizing the fact that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel has touched off partisan bickering in the Holy Land, so has it been in our own capital of Washington. President Trump was in attendance at the annual White House Hanukkah party this week, to which Democrats and others opposing his policies were not invited. Latkes (traditional fried potato pancakes) were served, of course, along with kosher lamb chops (apparently an annual White House tradition since 1996). The party was held the day after Trump’s proclamation regarding Jerusalem. There was an after-party at the Trump International Hotel (more latkes, more Republicans, salmon, caviar), at which the president received even more congratulations.

I had a good smirk when the New York Times article about Trump’s Hanukkah celebrations mentioned that the president’s grandchildren are Jewish. Oh, really? Not by Orthodox standards, certainly. True, Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, is Jewish. But Trump himself is Christian, and his daughter was raised as a Presbyterian. Although Ivanka has converted to Orthodox Judaism and is far more observant than I, that won’t be enough for many congregations to recognize her kids as genuine members of the clan.

When it comes time to read the Torah, either son of Jared and Ivanka shouldn’t be too surprised if name dropping “my grandpa, the president” isn’t enough to make him the tenth man. And that sort of clannish, non-inclusiveness seems rather sad to me.

We need to find more reasons to bring us together, not more reasons to drive artificial wedges between us. I pray at this Hanukkah season that the people of Israel, and those who profess to be Jewish around the world, will find it in their hearts to renounce the evils of divisiveness and embrace the spirit of acceptance and love.